


All the World's a Stage

by ifeelbetter



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Theater Setting, M/M, Mary Oliver abounds, Multi, Shakespeare productions, flagrant use of poetry, undercover university shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22483072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: In 1988, Crowley met his freshman roommate at the University of Saskatchewan and accidentally fell in love. Over the years, he and Aziraphale have settled into their roles as a director of stodgy classics and big-budget musicals respectively. But now Crowley has been tasked with finding a student at their alma mater who the Festival's Marketing department are sure will put the final nail in the coffin of the classical drama side of the Festival with his new play, a theatrical retelling ofParadise Lost. Crowley has been instructed to guide the student—whose name his boss has inconveniently forgotten—towards their goal, but Crowley's not going undercover alone. He's bringing Aziraphale with him, hoping that they'll bring enough balance to young Warlock's life that he won't bring about the end of the Stratford Festival with his play.Meanwhile, Adam Young becomes thoroughly distracted from writing his play by the pining professors who seem to be teaching  all of his friend Warlock's classes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Warlock Dowling/Adam Young
Comments: 22
Kudos: 108
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	All the World's a Stage

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born out of a very real love of the [Stratford Festival](https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/), the Canadian TV show called _Slings and Arrows_ , and an otherwise unused PhD in English literature. It would not have been possible without the cheerleading and comma hunting of [Cheese](https://gottagobuycheese.tumblr.com). Artwork is by the incomparable [WyvernQuill](https://wyvernquill.tumblr.com). Please do gush at them on tumblr about how great they are! I know I do.

_In the beginning. . ._

In 1988, Anthony J. Crowley walked into the residence hall to which he had been assigned. He had with him four things: (1) a poster for the original Broadway run of the musical _Chess_ , signed by the entire cast after Crowley had camped outside the theater door for an entire week; (2) a duffel-bag filled with an assortment of the highest fashion a thrift store could provide; (3) two small potted _Sansevieria laurentii_ that Crowley had liberated from a car dealership due to severe neglect; and (4) a promise for a job at a local bar from someone named Eve, a friend-of-a-friend (paid under the table of course). He did not, however, have (1) a set of parents with him, and he was already prepared to bite off the head of anyone who went beyond the sad, sideways looks he’d been getting all morning and finally said something to him about it. 

He was, at the time, nineteen years old, and so was the roommate he was about to meet.

* * * 

In the spring of 2018, Crowley discovered a memo in his cubby in the official mail room for the Stratford Festival creative company. He had been gainfully employed by the festival for all of a decade and had grown to loathe the memos that periodically appeared in his cubby. (Likewise, he loathed the fact that people—including him—called them “cubbies” unironically.)

The memo informed him that Beatrice “call me Beez” Bubel had added a meeting onto his calendar. He had, in fact, gotten the automatic invitation email an hour and a half earlier and had promptly RSVPed “yes” and yet, here they were. A _memo_. Honestly. 

In his experience, the closer an establishment tied itself to the Arts (with the capital letter very much in place), the less they tended to trust new-fangled technologies like, say, google calendars, which had only existed for, oh, a quarter of a century. 

He arrived for the meeting exactly on time. Beez, however, was late. 

Typical. 

Crowley’s relationship with Beez was, not to put too fine a point on it, awkward. It had been Beez who was waiting in Crowley’s small corner of a tiny, crumbling theater on opening night of a show that, thanks to Crowley’s machinations, would _not_ close in its first week, and it had been Beez who promised him bigger, better things at the Stratford Festival, crowning glory of any Canadian’s career even tangentially involved in theater. 

But it was also Beez who kept him on a shoestring budget and under a very oppressive thumb. It was Beez who sent him memos about how he should do absolute drivel like _Phantom of the Opera_ since it was “doing so well in the States.” It was also Beez who very politely ignored all the memos he sent about how _Seussical_ was doing equally well as _Phantom of the Opera_ ever did, and couldn’t he just do a children’s show this season? Just once?

Beez’s assistant, a very smug man named Hastur who Crowley felt a sort of full-body revulsion for based primarily on the crispness of the crease in his jeans, allowed Crowley to wait in Beez’s office. The point of granting Crowley the privilege of waiting inside instead of outside was that all the furniture in Beez’s office was designed to make the interloper feel diminished. (Crowley, who wouldn’t have been above the same tactics had their roles been reversed, recognized and respected Beez’s game.) Other than Beez’s luscious throne of an office chair, all other furniture in the room was spiky and uncomfortable, angular and fashionable to the point of pain.

Still. The awkwardly low stool had never been a match for Crowley’s champion-level ability to sprawl, or even lounge, on any given surface. 

The meeting had been titled “see about that youth” in both the email notification and the memo. What that meant, Crowley couldn’t say. Knowing Beez, there was no predicting if this was going to be one of those tasks that Beez, as the head of marketing, didn’t realize was standard operating procedure on the creative side, or whether this was going to be one of the _weird_ tasks. In the past, she had been as likely to send him to a senior drama student’s one-man show as to ask him to go undercover as a barista at a cafe’s open mic night. 

“Crowley, good,” said Beez, bustling through a door on the far end of the room. (Did she plan it so that whichever door you expected her to come through, she didn’t? Crowley suspected yes, but lacked proof.) “You went to the University of Saskatchewan, didn’t you?”

Non sequitur or not, Crowley got as far as the first consonant in the word “yes” before she continued. 

“The dean has been on the wire with me,” she said—and why-oh-why was Crowley surrounded by people who used phrased like _on the wire_ —“and he’s got an interesting prospect for me in the offing.”

Crowley managed to get to the vowel of “yes?” this time before she spoke over him again. 

“There’s this kid, some kind of savant or something,” she said, flipping through papers on her desk, still standing and sort of low-key looming over Crowley even though she wouldn’t have come up to his shoulder had he been standing. 

You had to admire her, you really did, thought Crowley. 

“He’d be perfect for a plan I’ve had knocking about for ages,” she continued. “A Canadian playwright for the artistic side, see, but he’ll be getting us an extra musical under the wire, so to speak.” 

Crowley didn’t bother to try to agree out loud, he simply nodded. 

“It’s just what I need to finally tip the scales to the musicals. A Canadian playwright who can finally, _finally_ help me turn this shitshow into a proper business.”

This was old hat for Crowley. There was, and had been for as long as Crowley had been a member of the theatrical community of Canada, a war between the musical theater faction of the Stratford Festival and the old guard who refused to admit that the word “Shakespeare” had ever been removed from either the title of the festival or its mission statement. The marketing team, of which Beez was the head, had landed very heavily on the side of the musicals. It was hard to argue, really, from their purely monetary perspective. The musicals attracted double or triple the audiences of the classical works. Where _Hamlet_ might have empty seats scattered throughout the midsize theater by the river, _Cats_ could sell out the big Festival Theater every weekday matinee. 

Crowley had been conscripted into the musical theater side mostly unknowingly. He’d always loved a showtune, and he’d helped a struggling little stage-musical version of _Treasure Island_ find their footing in Toronto before they struck gold off-Broadway in the States. Somehow, that had made him one of Beez’s most dependable musical directors. 

Since nobody had ever asked, Crowley had never been called upon to admit it was actually the children, not the showtunes, that had drawn him to that particular production of _Treasure Island_. He turned a wistful sigh every now and then to the idea of being allowed to direct _Peter Pan_ or a good Christmas pantomime, but then he remembered that being Beez’s go-to for the high-profit-margin-musicals had kept him in tailored jeans this past decade, and he kept his mouth shut. 

Beez had let a pause enter the conversation, so clearly it was Crowley’s turn to speak. 

“You need me to give him the recruitment pitch?” he asked. The “recruitment pitch” could come in the heavy-handed way Beez had done with Crowley ten years earlier, or it could come with a soft touch. Crowley favored the latter. Beez didn’t need to know that. 

Beez nodded. “You’ll need to, you know, smooth things over first. Earn his trust, that sort of thing.” 

“Make him an offer he can’t refuse?” Crowley drawled. 

Beez missed the joke and probably the reference to boot. “Exactly. Put it to him in a way that can’t fail. Direct his senior theater project or something. Be the mentor you artist types are always hankering after. Just _get_ him.”

Crowley nodded. He had, after all, been asked to do weirder things. And when he was tasked with the weirder things, he had a secret weapon: he called in backup. Not that Beez needed to know that there was a stuffy director of classic drama intended in almost every case for the smallest theater, the Studio, who also happened to be a bit obsessive about a certain Wardrobe Warehouse across town and who would, if Crowley asked, drop everything to go on an adventure. This was Crowley’s biggest secret. 

“Do you have a name for this kid?” he asked, slouching his way back to standing. “Or am I to wander the streets of Saskatoon hallooing for theatrical types?”

Beez frowned down at her papers. 

“Damn, I can’t for the life of me remember his name. Something biblical at any rate.” She pulled a post-it note off the edge of her notes. “I have a date of birth here, though.” She held the post-it note out to Crowley. “I mean—what’s the likelihood that two kids have the same birthday at a podunk school like the University of Saskatchewan anyway?” 

Crowley, who had been known to get lost in a puzzle or a wikipedia spiral, could have told her all about the Birthday Paradox and that the likelihood of two people having the same birthday is so close to a hundred percent after a group has reached seventy people as to be basically a dead certainty. In fact, had Crowley remembered that he had once watched a series of YouTube video lectures on the subject only a month earlier, he would have realized that the chances of there being two students who were both male, named something biblical, and sharing the same birthday might actually be better than one might suppose. 

Instead, he reasoned that he had achieved more with even less information. Just a teensy bit of hacking into the registrar’s office should do it. He had done worse to that registrar when he was a student there back in the 80s, after all, and he’d only gotten better at it since then. 

“Consider it done,” he said.

* * * 

In 1988, Aziraphale arrived on campus bundled into the backseat of Gabriel’s car. The car, like the house they had recently left, was pristine and dazzling white. Also like the house they had just left, Aziraphale was not allowed to touch anything. He spent the entire ride concentrating on not moving and definitely not eating the half of a croissant wrapped in paper in his pocket.

He had proven himself untrustworthy with things that were pristine and dazzling white as a small child and no one, especially not their parents, had ever let him live it down. Though he had no memory of the moment, a two-year-old Aziraphale had once tottered across a foyer and pounded with his baby fists against a priceless painting, leaving grubby handprints in his wake. From then on, he was Not To Be Trusted with things that were neat and perfect. 

He was resolved—secretly—to have a messy dorm room. He had not mentioned this plan to anyone in his family, especially not the brothers who were talking to each other about him over his head at that very moment. 

He had noticed a young man with startlingly red hair for a moment back at the cafe, when he had divided his croissant in half with a woman who had gotten all the way to the cashier in the long queue but then realized she had forgotten her wallet. Aziraphale did not know it yet, but the young man with the red hair was about to become many things to him, not the least of which was his roommate.

* * * 

Crowley tried texting Aziraphale first.

 **meet me at our usual place,** he wrote. 

No response came for at least an hour. Crowley was not expecting anything less, so he was unsurprised. Aziraphale often forgot that his phone had the ability to text altogether. This was, in part, because it was a brick of a phone—the kind that you had to press “5” three times to get to L. 

_WHERE?_ was the response. 

Aziraphale also forgot how to turn capslock on and off. Once on, it tended to stay on for months. Crowley resigned himself to being virtually screamed at via text for the foreseeable future. 

**our USUAL** , he sent, rolling his eyes. 

A minute later, the phone rang. 

“My dear, it takes ever so long to type it all out,” said Aziraphale, not bothering to wait for Crowley to confirm he had indeed answered the phone. 

“Texting is faster when you have a real keypad,” said Crowley. “And a smartphone.”

Aziraphale tutted quietly. “You didn’t ring me to reheat old cabbage.”

“I didn’t ring you, you rang me,” Crowley pointed out, rolling his eyes. “And that’s not an expression, that ‘old cabbage’ thing. You made that up this very minute.”

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” said Aziraphale with a hint of finality. “You knew what I meant.”

“Would you please meet me for lunch? I have something important I need to talk about with you,” said Crowley. 

There was a thump on the other end and then a quick scramble. 

“So sorry, I seem to have dropped the phone,” said Aziraphale’s voice from a distance. “Just a tick.”

More scrambling. 

“Lunch, you say?” said Aziraphale, clearly again, but slightly breathless. “And—something, um, something important?” 

“Yes, angel, I’ll even treat you to Bijou.”

Bijou was predictably Aziraphale’s favorite restaurant in Stratford. It had the dual benefits of having truly excellent food and a very small staff, all of whom were utterly charmed by Aziraphale’s frumpiness and tendency to drop a couple hundred dollars on lunch. 

“Oh. Um. That sounds lovely, dear boy,” said Aziraphale. 

He still sounded frazzled. Crowley assumed something atrocious had happened, like someone tried to iron the period-authentic doublet or a keen tourist wanted to try on a codpiece again. Crowley would no doubt hear about it over lunch. 

“Excellent. Meet you in an hour?” Crowley asked. That might even give him enough time to dig into the registrar’s website to find the kid. He’d been into the student records at his alma mater a couple of times over the years just to make sure he still could, so poking around looking for a kid that matched Beez’s information didn’t seem like it would take too long. 

“In an hour,” Aziraphale confirmed and hung up. 

Crowley opened his laptop and pulled up the University of Saskatchewan’s website. It took a little doing—slightly more than expected, but still nowhere near enough to count as a challenge—before Crowley had pulled up the course schedule for three boys who happened to all have the right birthday. 

“Bloody mental working backwards like this,” he grumbled, finally having remembered about the Birthday Paradox and the likelihood of finding the right boy this way. 

Beez had said that the boy had one of those biblical-kinds of names. That certainly eliminated the Johnson kid, but it could equally well refer to either Adam or Warlock. Both sounded chockablock with biblical fervor to Crowley, who, admittedly, was no expert. 

It was probably Warlock Dowling. The last name sounded vaguely familiar, and then it clicked—Dowling. That abominably American sitcom back in the 90’s, the one in the treehouse. The actor who played that uncle—his name had been Dowling, hadn’t it? 

A quick search and, yes, Warlock Dowling was the son of a D-list American celebrity and what looked like a very determined contender for Best Lawn Award from a neighborhood association committee. Crowley scrolled through some of the photos, and young Warlock always hung around the edges of every shot, hidden behind a mass of long, greasy hair and a thick veneer of Goth awkwardness. 

Oh, yes. This had to be the one. 

Crowley went back to Warlock’s course schedule. 

He was beginning to get a terrible idea for how he and Aziraphale were going to sneak in to influence the poor kid. With any luck, they’d be able to steer him well away from the Stratford Festival altogether. With a great deal of luck, they’d be able to save him from his own course selections.

* * * 

_1992._

“My dear, you were magnificent,” said Aziraphale breathlessly, clearly having elbowed his way through the tiny throng of excited students to get to Crowley’s dressing room. 

Crowley felt a blush rise, and tried to stamp it down with a frown. 

“We got a laugh in my big number, though. Somebody laughed at my love song, angel,” he said sulkily. 

Crowley’s honors project was a gender non-conforming version of _Follies_. He had played Sally, crooning “Losing My Mind” in a sequined red dress on a grand piano. Someone had laughed. 

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. “Did they? I didn’t hear it.”

Crowley met Aziraphale’s eyes in the vanity mirror. He wasn’t in the red dress anymore, but he had loved it with a passion since the first day they’d done the fitting in costumes. He’d felt beautiful and sad in that dress, and someone had laughed. 

“ _I_ heard it,” he said. 

“Well, I was in the audience and I couldn’t hear a thing over how stunning you were,” said Aziraphale, folding his hands behind his back. He was such a stuffy dear, really. “I dare say no one could hear a thing besides you, not with you up there looking like that.”

“Thanks,” said Crowley. But he knew better. There had been a laugh or two during their previews too. 

Crowley reached behind his head to unpin the long hair he had grown for this role. He had to pat around to try to find all the pins, and then startled when another hand landed over his. 

“Allow me,” said Aziraphale. Crowley nodded, unsure what his voice would sound like now that his throat had gone so dry. 

Aziraphale ran his fingers along and through Crowley’s hair with a feather-light touch, pulling pins with the kind of gentle care he usually only directed towards scripts and mending costumes. The red hair began to fall, bouncing against Crowley’s shoulders, brushing the nape of his neck. Aziraphale’s clever fingers slid across Crowley’s neck, knuckles leaving a trail of sparks.

And then Aziraphale met Crowley’s eyes in the vanity mirror again. Crowley wondered whether this was going to be the time, whether this was the moment when they’d finally talk about all of the sparks and lingering glances and stupidly, toxically wonderful moments. It had been years already, and not a _word_ from Aziraphale. 

And then the pop of a champagne bottle cork down the hallway and the moment crystallized and broke.

* * * 

Between Aziraphale and Crowley, it would surprise most people to learn that it was Crowley who always arrived early for their shared meals. Without Crowley driving him, Aziraphale always had to walk back into town from the warehouse, and he invariably left too late to arrive in a timely fashion. He always bustled in a good quarter of an hour late, filled with apologies and a righteous sense that anyone reasonable would have stayed to handle whatever trifle he had been delayed by.

Crowley had stopped pointing out that Aziraphale, who was not in any sense employed by the costume warehouse, was not even slightly responsible for the day-to-day scrimmages with handsy tourists. Pointing it out was like dropping a coin into a very determined juke-box that could only play one song, and that song was a rant about how directors these days needed to take more of an interest in the history of the festival. 

Bijou, as Aziraphale’s favorite restaurant, and its staff were very accustomed to the way Crowley would arrive at least twenty minutes before his reservation and then fidget in his chair, idly folding and unfolding his napkin, until Aziraphale arrived. 

So when Crowley arrived, the fact that the host waggled his eyebrows at Crowley excitedly and then directed him to a table Aziraphale was already seated at was a surprise. 

“Oh, you’re here,” said Crowley stupidly. 

“You did invite me,” said Aziraphale primly. “And you said it was—you said ‘important.’”

“We–ell,” said Crowley, drawing out the vowel, “I mean. No more important than any other of Beez’s schemes.”

Aziraphale had been taking a sip of his water, but he coughed suddenly. Crowley handed him his napkin, and Aziraphale dabbed at the water he’d sputtered onto the tablecloth. 

“Beez?” Aziraphale repeated. “Oh, just a—that is to say—um, a scheme?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes, another brilliant scheme to end the classical drama half of the festival once and for all.” He warmed to his subject. “Because _obviously_ the solution to a flagging attendance at our massively overpriced den of iniquity, a capitalist exclusion of the masses from any access to the arts—”

“Yes, dear, I know,” said Aziraphale, finished coughing, and trying to hide the fact that he clearly found Crowley’s rants charming. (The fact that he enjoyed them was itself a joy for Crowley, and it usually started one of those odd feedback loops where Crowley glowed at Aziraphale glowing at him, and it became so easy to forget—well.)

“If she’d just let me put on a Christmas spectacle! A real panto, you know?” said Crowley. “I could make back the entire deficit in a single evening. Just imagine Brian Bedford coming back for a turn as the Widow Twankey, that’s all I have to say about that.”

“You’ve said on numerous occasions.”

“But nooooo,” said Crowley, proving that, no, that was not all he had to say on the subject. He switched to a pursed-lips imitation of Beez’s voice, “we have to end the classical drama department, devote all of our time to doing big budget musicals on a shoestring budget—thanks _ever_ so much, Crowley—and never, ever do anything a child might enjoy seeing.” He slumped back in his chair. “And, of course, we also have to somehow trick some emo youth into writing just such a musical as our ‘native Canadian playwright’ for next season. Poor kid won’t even know what hit him.”

“Sorry, what was that last bit?” asked Aziraphale, but he was interrupted by a waiter arriving for their order. 

As always, Crowley waited for the pleasantries between Aziraphale and the wait staff (“I _do_ love the new tablecloths, so lovely” and “Did you ever end up finishing that poem? Marvelous!”) that ended with Aziraphale ordering something with immense thought and precision, and then Crowley simply said, “Same for me” when the waiter finally turned to look at him too. 

“Now, what was that about an emotional youth again?” asked Aziraphale. The helpful waiter had also filled their wine glasses, which Crowley appreciated much more than the small talk. 

“An _emo_ youth,” corrected Crowley. “But, actually—nevermind. Beez wants me to get my hooks into some poor unsuspecting college student who the dean thinks will be likely to produce the sort of musical Beez is always looking to produce more of. But this time, it will be the thing that takes the slot for the Canadian playwright, you know? How the festival always leaves a spot in the classical drama department for a local?”

Aziraphale primly smoothed out the tablecloth. “Since I have directed more than my fair share of the plays written by Canadian playwrights—”

“Only when they’re Canadian adaptations of _Paradise Lost_ or a one-woman version of _Midsummer_.” The former hadn’t been half bad, but the latter. Crowley shuddered at the memory. Even Aziraphale’s truly excellent direction had not been enough to hide that it was, at its heart, a truly wretched enterprise. 

“—quite, yes, which, as I said, means I have directed more than my fair share of them,” Aziraphale continued with only an arched eyebrow to note Crowley’s interruption, “I only meant to say I am _aware_ of the program within my own department, yes. What about it?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Well, _obviously_ , if Beez can boggart that slot in your department, it will give her an inroad. She’ll be spreading her tendrils in no time and, bob’s your uncle. The whole department is devoted to musicals.”

“Surely not,” said Aziraphale. “Just from one student’s play?”

“Apparently he’s very good.”

Aziraphale sipped his wine. Crowley watched his throat move, and leaned forward. 

“Imagine if they never let you put on your production of _Private Lives_ ,” said Crowley. “You’ll have to leave the festival to ever get a chance to direct a Noel Coward play. Maybe try the Shaw Festival.”

Because if Crowley’s deepest artistic secret was that he would rather be putting on children’s theater, Aziraphale’s was that he just wanted to direct one of those highly literate, intoxicatingly witty, downright saucy Noel Coward plays. He’d been the go-to director for a series of notable Hamlets. For a while, no Canadian actor seemed able to resist going to Aziraphale’s tiny black box theater for a turn as the melancholy Dane. And Aziraphale, conscious that a serious classic theater director ought to enjoy the maudlin ones and, ever too polite to ask for what he really wanted, he always agreed. 

He’d put on seven different _Hamlet_ s so far, a fair number of _Uncle Vanya_ s, but not a single production of Coward. The mockups he’d made specifically for _Private Lives_ in his spare time filled a small storage room somewhere, even Crowley didn’t know exactly where. Crowley had seen a small collection of notebooks filled with ideas for _Blithe Spirits_ and had stood with Aziraphale in the costume warehouse as he sighed wistfully looking at the period appropriate back catalog. All of it simply waited for Aziraphale’s big chance. 

“They’ll probably never put on another play,” said Crowley. “Not after this kid’s done his musical.”

He could see it working on Aziraphale.

“What, um,” said Aziraphale finally, “what exactly do you intend to do about it?”

Crowley slouched back again. He had hit his target. 

“Oh, well, _I’m_ going to do as instructed and go undercover as a TA for one of this kid’s classes this term,” he said. “ _I’m_ going to pump him full of all the mentoring he can take, show him the ropes, so to speak.”

“I gather from your emphasis that you think it would behoove me to also go undercover and try to edge him the other direction,” said Aziraphale. Crowley grinned. 

“Haven’t you always wanted to teach a seminar back at our alma mater?” 

Aziraphale made that face, the one that meant he could tell Crowley was pulling out all of his most tempting tricks, but that he was also very tempted against his better judgement. 

“I suppose so,” he said finally. “But how will we know which classes to sneak into?”

“That,” said Crowley, pulling out a printed version of Warlock Dowling’s class schedule, “is already taken care of.”

* * * 

_1990._

Despite the fact that Crowley’s side of the dorm room was spotless—almost empty—he offered no complaints about the cozy squalor of Aziraphale’s side of the room. In fact, he seemed unendingly patient about the stacks of books, fleece blankets, and throw pillows. 

But the patience and quiet acceptance did not extend to the single class they shared: Introduction to Poetry. No, Crowley’s patience seemed to fizzle and die there. 

“Mary _Oliver_ isn’t a classic poet?” demanded Crowley. He had been lounging across Aziraphale’s bed, tipped upside down and dangling off the edge. Aziraphale had edged a couple of his coziest blankets his way an hour or so before, and Crowley had been finding his way towards becoming cocooned in them. 

(This was, of course, Aziraphale’s intention. Though he liked a fuzzy blanket as much as the next person, it was the fact that Crowley ended up nesting in them that kept inspiring him to acquire more and more.)

“Well, she isn’t, is she?” said Aziraphale. He was sitting at the desk, their class anthology open in front of him. “She was born in 1935. That’s hardly far enough into the past to be a classic.”

“Some people are instant classics.” Crowley started to unentangle himself from the blankets. “ _Some_ people are geniuses.”

“She can be a genius without leapfrogging to becoming a classic.” Aziraphale sighed as Crowley returned to his own barren side of the room in a huff. “Really, dear, it’s not an insult. It just takes time to canonize someone, you know.”

“Oh, yes, the _canon_ ,” said Crowley in the voice he did that Aziraphale had been led to believe was somehow an imitation of him. “Can’t just respect a work of genius, we must debate whether a coterie of dead white men—”

“I was _hardly_ suggesting that only dead white men—”

“—are willing to accept a woman, frankly, who outclasses most of them—”

“—I’m not even disagreeing that she is brilliant, of course I see that she’s brilliant—”

“—and, what, will nothing move forward until—will no _progress_ ever be made unless some band of prim hoighty-toighty literati _deign_ to allow a breath of freedom to come into their stodgy, uptight...” Crowley cut himself off abruptly, and Aziraphale stuttered to a halt within a breath. 

No point going over _that_ argument again. There were some topics that Aziraphale would always allow the opinions of stuffy elitists to trump his own judgement. Crowley was, to a certain degree, used to it. 

“Regardless,” said Aziraphale, finally, breaking the silence, “it _is_ a bloody brilliant poem.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked up at the corner, charmed despite himself.

* * * 

It hadn’t escaped Crowley’s attention that whichever of Warlock Downing’s classes he chose to gatecrash, he’d be screwed. There was a lot of ancient, epic poetry and very, very dry-looking linguistics, for starters. Crowley would be discovered as a cuckoo in the teacher’s assistant nest within a day in either of those. It had come down to a choice between young Warlock’s two classes in the English department in his final term at school, and he and Aziraphale had flipped a coin.

The resulting absurdity on Aziraphale’s side almost—almost—made up for Crowley having to wake up at 7AM to get to the 8AM lecture of Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Romances, the second half of a year-long sequence that (in Crowley’s humble opinion) would bore slabs of marble to tears. Aziraphale, a natural morning person, had tried desperately to swap, but Crowley was rather invested in seeing what Aziraphale would do with Masters of Contemporary Poetry. 

The thought of Aziraphale’s face when he scrolled through the assigned texts on Crowley’s laptop was the only thing that got Crowley out of bed without murdering the alarm clock next to him. It also sustained him through shower, breakfast, and to the threshold of his apartment complex (where he was reminded by a gust of wind that autumn in Saskatoon was much more Autumn-with-capital-letters than he had become accustomed to).

Even peeved-Aziraphale was not enough to warm him against the wind. He pulled the collar of his fashionable-but-not-particularly-warm jacket up against the wind. He was appallingly early. He never meant to be, but it happened against his will. 

So he slouched in one of the chairs near enough to the front of the hall in the hope that he would be taken for a TA but not so near as to be taken for an _eager_ TA. He had his pride, after all. He wanted the undergraduates to not talk to him, but not to look down on him. He remembered the very few TAs he had been instructed by during his own university days and only a very slim number had managed to walk that fine line. 

Sadly, being recognized as a TA came with a cost. Within moments, he was knee-deep in stories about rehearsal schedules, family vacations, and sickly relatives that would necessitate any number of absences. Crowley simply waited them out, blinking slowly. The students eventually trailed off and returned to their seats. (It was a trick that Crowley had learned from Beez. The key bit was not blinking for as long as possible. Even without registering that it was the blinking that was troubling them, people felt Troubled.)

The lecture turned out to be about Hamlet. Right off the bat, first thing of the semester: Hamlet. What an absolute shitshow this was going to be. And the professor talked about Hamlet with the kind of reverence that, frankly, should be reserved specifically for Aziraphale to use when talking about tiramisu. In all other contexts, it was gauche. 

Crowley strained very hard not to roll his eyes in a continuous loop throughout the entire lecture. 

He couldn’t abide someone who went straight for the hyperbole. _Greatest writer in the English language_. What absolute horseshit. Shakespeare had a phrase or two that even Crowley would grant him, but he was no Mary Oliver. 

After the lecture, the large lecture hall divided awkwardly into the small cadres of students who dutifully followed each TA out of the room towards their designated discussion classes. Crowley was reminded very strongly of ducklings or possibly even lemmings. 

Warlock Dowling _almost_ fit in with the sea of other undergrads. He stuck out the way Crowley remembered sticking out, which was odd given that their financial and social situations could not have been more different. Crowley had come to this college direct from an establishment that eschewed calling itself an “orphanage” (but was one), and Warlock Dowling, by all accounts, had come from a mansion. 

And yet Crowley had also once slouched in one of these seats, decked in black, ready to fight anyone who looked at him funny. 

Warlock glared at him. Crowley resisted the urge to pinch his cheeks. 

“Right,” he said to the class at large. “How many of you know who Paul Rudnick is?”

No hands went up. Crowley nearly hissed. 

“American playwright, hasn’t been dead for four hundred years, ring a bell?”

Nothing. Crowley _did_ hiss. 

“The _New York Times_ said—and I quote— ‘Line by line, Mr. Rudnick may be the funniest writer for the stage in the United States today,’ and you can’t be bothered to read something not written by a man who never met a gonorrhea joke he could say no to?”

Silence. Crowley made unpleasantly long eye-contact with a student at random.

“He wrote a play called _I Hate Hamlet_ ,” he finally said into the silence. “That’s my point. I also hate Hamlet.”

The students looked at each other. A good portion of them started to write it down in their notebooks. 

Crowley despaired. 

“Right.” This was going to call for drastic action. “Let’s read this fetid play. Who wants to be Hamlet?”

* * * 

_1998._

Aziraphale’s brother sent a note through his assistant that he would not be coming to Aziraphale’s production of _The Cherry Orchard_ , with a strongly implied subtext that it was absolutely unreasonable of Aziraphale to have asked. There was a similar message from their parents, but that one simmered along on top of a lot of subtextual questions about how long Aziraphale intended to keep trying when he clearly was better suited to a more mundane life. He could marry a nice heiress, his father had helpfully suggested over Christmas dinner once. 

_The Cherry Orchard_ was also only going to be open for two weeks, so could Aziraphale really blame them for not finding time in such a short window? 

“Two weeks?” asked Crowley, his voice tinny through the pay phone. “Why’s it closing in two weeks?”

“Something about the budget, I think,” said Aziraphale, twisting the phone cord between his fingers. “The director rather over-spent on the costumes.”

“Ah, well if it’s the budget,” said Crowley. “Don’t let them pin that on you, angel. You’re breaking your back for that lot, and you’re the best of them.”

“Oh, I hardly think—” 

“No, you _are_ ,” said Crowley. “But, look, I know it’s important to you, but I don’t think I can get back to Canada by—”

Aziraphale, aghast at the implication that he would demand that Crowley upend his whole rehearsal schedule in Berlin just to come back to see a regional production that, frankly, was lucky to get two whole weeks, tried to interrupt, “You hardly need to apologize for that, my dear.”

“I’m trying to, though. I’m trying to get a flight.” There was a pause. “Did you just call me your dear?”

“Was I not supposed to?” asked Aziraphale. “Only it slipped out. I didn’t mean anything, um, offensive by it.”

“It’s fine,” said Crowley, sounding tired. 

“It’s not important, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, turning back to the more pressing matter. “Stay in Berlin. It’s fine.”

“It’s not— _fine_ , I won’t come back then,” said Crowley. 

There was another long pause, long enough that Aziraphale almost wondered if Crowley had walked away from the phone, left it dangling off the hook or draped across a sofa in his shared flat across the world. 

“I miss you,” Aziraphale admitted finally. He had been imagining the abandoned phone lying tossed on the sofa so thoroughly that he was surprised to hear Crowley respond. 

“I always miss you,” he said, quiet. 

“It’s not important,” Aziraphale repeated. “My show, I mean. But...you’re going to be so important someday, Crowley. That’s what’s really important. You’re on the right track, I know you are.”

“You didn’t ring me across an ocean to cheer me up about my musical version of _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ ,” said Crowley.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I don’t think you actually know what is or isn’t important, Aziraphale,” said Crowley. “But just you watch. I’m going to make it to your show before it closes. Just you watch.”

Aziraphale smiled and closed his eyes. 

“My brother is going to get tenure,” he said, mostly just to fill the silence. 

“Bully for him.” Crowley, neither a fan of Gabriel nor of any school that would grant him tenure, only let a small amount of audible cynicism creep into the comment. 

“My parents want to celebrate.”

There was another pause, muffled by some movement on Crowley’s end of the call. If they had been back in their college dorm, it would have been when Crowley rolled over to look at Aziraphale. 

“They’re throwing a party the same night as your opening night, aren’t they?” asked Crowley with devastating accuracy. 

“The date must have slipped their minds.” Aziraphale twisted the phone cord harder. “It must be an oversight.”

There were arguments that had been had over the years, waves that crested and fell over this topic. Aziraphale and his bruised heart, Crowley holding onto grudges Aziraphale had let go. Aziraphale knew he shouldn’t have told Crowley, but sometimes a heart just wants the same soothing it’s had in the past, even if it needs to phone Berlin from a payphone outside a gas station in Chapleau to get it. 

“I’m sorry,” said Crowley and he meant it. 

Crowley’s plane landed two hours before curtain on opening night. He bought a ticket in the nosebleed seats and had to fly out again at nine in the morning the next day, but he was there.

* * * 

When Aziraphale had asked Crowley to swap classes with him, it wasn’t strictly because he would need to represent an authority on an era of poetic tradition that he had never known particularly well. Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale was well acquainted with the library and was on a listserv of bookshop owners in the greater Ontario region who would be happy to direct him to an appropriate book or two to gain mastery. No, Aziraphale’s discomfort came from a somewhat more fundamental level.

He just wasn’t comfortable calling anything younger than a hundred years old “masterful” when it came to literature. If it had been written in his lifetime, it couldn’t very well be the equal of “Ode to a Nightingale,” now could it? One couldn’t just _like_ a work of literature into being important, after all. That required consensus. It required authority. 

There was an unopened email in Aziraphale’s personal inbox from his brother. Or, rather, there was an email written by someone else about a conference Gabriel would be presenting at that Gabriel wanted Aziraphale to attend. The email would contain a time, place, and schedule of events, but it would not contain a single word from his brother. 

Aziraphale would probably attend. His parents would almost certainly be there. He’d be icily ignored next Christmas if he didn’t attend. 

Gabriel’s work defending the canon against the encroachment of “reclaimed” historical figures and contemporary authors had been the pride of their family for years. Aziraphale almost always fielded a question or two about his brother’s work whenever someone interviewed him, even if it was explicitly intended as PR for an upcoming show of Aziraphale’s. 

“Your brother must be so proud to have you carry on his tradition,” reporters would say during the after party for the opening night of his fifth _Hamlet_. 

“Oh, absolutely,” Aziraphale would agree, even though his brother had never once attended an opening night for one of his productions. “Must defend the classics, absolutely.”

So it felt rather illicit to purchase a volume of contemporary poetry from Fanfare Books right in the middle of Stratford. Aziraphale half-earnestly wished that the book could be wrapped in brown paper like they used to do with forbidden records and banned books. 

It felt even more forbidden to sit brazenly under the chalked words “Masters of Contemporary Poetry” in the classroom a month later. 

Crowley had gotten the better end of this deal in far more ways than one. While all Crowley would be doing this term would be grading papers and having nice little discussions about _Hamlet_ , Aziraphale was required to plan entire lessons. He would have to possibly even lecture. 

He sat at the front desk absolutely ramrod straight and made brief, awkward eye contact as the students shuffled in. 

He clocked Warlock Dowling very, very quickly. Oh dear. Perhaps it would be harder to nudge him away from Crowley’s path of destruction than Aziraphale had initially considered. 

“Excuse me…sir? Professor?” said a voice, shaking Aziraphale out of his contemplation of Warlock Dowling’s progress towards the absolute back of the room, which, in such a small room, was still very close. 

“Oh, yes, professor…right, that’s me,” he said to the student who had spoken. “How can I help you, young man?”

The young man in question was that sort of tawny blonde, muscular-without-being-muscly, rugged-but-sensitive sort of perfection that occurred every now and then in this age group. He probably was the captain of a sports team and star in the school play in primary school. 

“I was just wondering, sir, if ‘contemporary’ has canonical demarcations,” said the young man. “Like. Does the meaning of ‘contemporary’ change as time moves forward? Or is it like ‘modern’ where there’s a time period that you mean when you say ‘modern’ even though ‘modern’ would usually mean, you know. Modern. Anything happening lately, that sort of thing.”

Aziraphale looked over his glasses at the young man. 

“Only, it just seems a bit arbitrary,” the young man continued. “Like. I get why the Victorian era gets called that, but it seems to me like the modernist era is bogarting the word ‘modern.’ Sir.”

Aziraphale noted out of the corner of his eye that Warlock Dowling had inconspicuously taken the earbuds out of his ears. He wasn’t giving the conversation his full attention, but he _was_ giving it more attention than he wanted other people to notice. 

“That’s an excellent point, erm. Sorry, what was your name again?” said Aziraphale, looking down at his roster. 

“Oh, I’m not signed up for the class yet. I don’t sign up for classes until I’m sure I’ll find them interesting.” The young man beamed and the force of his goodwill somehow softened the way his words landed. “I’m Adam Young.”

“An excellent point, as I said, Adam. I could answer your question as an authority on literature, but I rather think we’d both be better served letting the class take a swing at it first, don’t you think?”

Adam beamed and Aziraphale had the distinct sense that he had passed a test. 

“Sounds good, sir.” Adam Young turned and took a seat directly in front of Warlock Dowling. A moment later, he twisted around in his seat and introduced himself. Warlock, clearly unaccustomed to people willingly reaching out without prompting, grunted his replies at first. Aziraphale knew all about the prickly thawing of a person like that, though, and he could see the first signs of friendship blooming. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to sway Warlock Dowling after all.

* * * 

When Aziraphale joined Crowley working at the Stratford Festival, they’d started meeting along the Arden River to feed the swans and pretend to have accidentally bumped into each other. They had spent cumulative years walking up and down its banks and were single-handedly responsible for turning the tide in the quantity of bread those poor swans had had thrown their way, now replaced with sensible seeds. But, really, the Arden was the replacement for the real origin of their riverside walks, which had started along the South Saskatchewan River in Cosmopolitan Park back in their salad days.

So that’s where Aziraphale found Crowley after his class, back on the weather-beaten bench at the foot of the Broadway Bridge. Funny how some things change and others stay the same. 

“How were the contemporary masters?” asked Crowley without turning to see that Aziraphale was the person crunching through the leaves towards his bench. Aziraphale always wondered how Crowley just seemed to _know_ that it was Aziraphale and never needed to check. 

“Perfectly acceptable,” he said. “How was Hamlet?”

“Dull as ever.” Finally, Crowley turned his head towards Aziraphale as he joined him on the bench. Aziraphale tutted his customary disagreement. 

“Warlock Dowling certainly wears a lot of black,” said Aziraphale after a pause. 

Crowley snorted. 

“And yet I still think I might win this.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Aziraphale fidgeted in his seat. “It’s just that he seemed quite taken with another of my students, a young man named Adam Young. Very charming young man. Very studious.”

“You’re matchmaking, aren’t you?” said Crowley, twisting in a way that would have looked deeply uncomfortable on anyone else. It just looked languorous and _cool_ on Crowley, though. 

“I rather think I won’t need to.”

Crowley scoffed. “Matchmake all you like, angel. I know Warlock Dowling’s type well and let’s just say it’s not a type likely to win the hand of the fair maiden.”

“You know his type because you _are_ that type, you mean.” 

Crowley shrugged. He seemed unbothered by the comparison. Aziraphale was almost offended on Crowley’s behalf. Warlock Dowling might wear black, but he had none of Crowley’s savoir faire, his _presence_. It should be laughable to compare them, and here was Crowley accepting it as blase fact. 

“You’ve won a fair maiden or two in your time,” continued Aziraphale, trying another tack. “Or, well. Fair gender-neutral equivalents.” 

That made the eyebrow go up again. There really was no way to start listing them all without it becoming painfully blatant how Aziraphale had seethed silently during each relationship. 

“I’m just saying. If he’s the same type as you, he’s not going to do badly.”

“You think he has a shot with the other one...the one who’s so studious and charming?” Crowley asked. 

_If we’re going by precedent, then absolutely,_ thought Aziraphale, but held his tongue. Aziraphale might have been every bit as polite and studious as Adam Young, but he had never had that other quality, the “it” factor that turned heads. No, precedent wasn’t going to help here. Winning an Aziraphale was one thing, but an Adam Young? Could Warlock do it? 

“He might need a little help,” Aziraphale conceded. 

And that’s how the mission accidentally got re-written. Is it that surprising that two men who had given their life to drama would be incapable of resisting such a tantalizing morsel of it?

* * * 

_1994._

Aziraphale’s third _Hamlet_ was also his first production of _Hamlet_ during which he charged the entirety of the audience for the privilege of being there. (The first one had been a requirement for graduating and, thus, had been filled with friends, fellow students, and authoritative people with clipboards. The second had been performed in a quiet church ostensibly as a favor to the pastor but really as a favor to Aziraphale. None of the parishioners paid for their tickets, but none of them booed either.)

Most of Aziraphale’s opening night nerves came from Gabriel’s friend, a theater critic named, of all things, Sandalphon. Aziraphale had spent the first act watching his profile—tipped back, watching the production down his nose—before he decided that he’d had enough of masochism and would simply pace quietly outside the green room. 

He’d have to make an appearance during intermission, wouldn’t he. He’d have to smile and pretend to be anything other than a bundle of nerves. Sandalphon was already clearly gearing up to write a scorching review, but he might be prevented from reporting awful things back to Gabriel personally. He might raze the production to the ground, but Aziraphale couldn’t help but hope he could stop him from saying something to Gabriel like, “Your brother is a bit pathetic, isn’t he?” If Aziraphale could just seem dignified enough—or some other ineffable quality that demonstrated in large enough doses would prevent the aside from Sandalphon to Gabriel. Or, rather, it would prevent it in Aziraphale’s imagination because somewhere deeper, he knew his brother was far more likely to make the comment than hear it. 

Aziraphale could probably manage the intermission. He’d lean against the bar, that’s what he’d do. He’d lean and it would look natural. 

He was leaning (unnaturally, awkwardly, and uncomfortably) against the bar a full twenty minutes before intermission began. He also had begun to tear cocktail napkins into shreds, leaving a small nest on the corner of the bar next to him. 

Then the people started pouring out of the theater, filing noisily towards the bar. 

“Rather stiff, isn’t it?” said one person to another. “Like automatons, I thought.”

“Well, the Ophelia is dry as dust, so what is the Hamlet to do? Fall in love all by himself?” said the other. Laughter. 

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what his face ought to do. 

A flash of red hair caught his attention. Oh, thank goodness, it really was Crowley. Aziraphale saw the hair first, then the sunglasses, then the chic black, and, finally, the person leaning into him. 

Suddenly it was a lot easier to ignore the hum of laughter and conversation around him. 

The person propped on Crowley’s elbow was fashionable, angular, and bored. Aziraphale recognized parts of the man’s clothes—a jacket he’d seen once in Gabriel’s closet, a bag he’d seen on a celebrity, shoes he’d seen an advert for. Aziraphale tugged nervously at his old, weathered bow tie. He really should have gotten something new for this premiere. 

“Aziraphale, there you are!” said Crowley, having spotted Aziraphale while he was still cataloguing Crowley’s date’s clothes. “What a wonder you’ve done with it, angel! It’s downright watchable in your hands.”

Aziraphale forced a tight smile. “You know what Calvino said about flattery, my dear.”

Crowley grimaced. “He said he was small, ugly, and dirty, but that it didn’t stop him from strutting like a turkey at the first hint of flattery.” He tipped his glasses to raise a sardonic (but somehow also bone-warming) eyebrow at Aziraphale. “You’re neither small, ugly, nor dirty, so I fail to see the relevance.”

“Wonderful first half,” said the date. “You must be so proud.”

“Aziraphale, this is Luc,” said Crowley, and Luc held a hand out at just the right angle that Aziraphale was not entirely sure whether he was expected to kiss it or shake it. 

He chose the latter. 

“Charmed,” said Luc. 

“The pleasure is all mine,” said Aziraphale, lying through his teeth. “It’s always nice to have a few friendly faces on opening night.”

Luc—whose face was closer to a sneer than anything that could be described as friendly—nodded regally. He turned towards the bar to explain an incredibly complicated drink from the harried bartender. 

Crowley and Aziraphale were left to avoid each other’s eye contact awkwardly. 

“Look, I—” Crowley started to, but Aziraphale had started speaking in the same breath. 

“It’s been so—oh, I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale. “What were you going to say?”

Crowley shook his head. His hair was shorter now, Aziraphale noted with a slight pang. The long curls were gone, replaced with something buzzed along the sides and spike through the middle. It made his hair look faintly untouchable. 

“Nothing. It was nothing,” said Crowley. 

Awkward silence descended again, muffled by the buzz of conversation around them and the exchange between Luc and the bartender. 

“It really is lovely to see you again,” said Aziraphale and meant it as hard as he could. Crowley had always been the one who could layer subtle, deeper meanings under simple phrases. Aziraphale’s pleasantries always just sounded...pleasant. He wasn’t sure if Crowley had learned a skill he hadn’t or the other way around. 

“It’s been too long,” said Crowley finally, politely. Luc was back with his drink and was gently—but definitively—guiding Crowley away. “We’ll catch up. Call me sometime.”

Aziraphale watched them disappear back into the crowd.

* * * 

“Right, so I know you’re reading _Hamlet_ in class with your lecturer, but we’re going to be doing _Romeo and Juliet_ in my classroom,” Crowley announced. He had used an entire term’s worth of printing privileges printing out copies, so the little snots should be grateful.

A student in the first row raised a hand and waited dutifully until Crowley called on her. “Will this be on the exam?”

Crowley groaned. “No. Not on the exam, absolutely not. Just a distillation of love in dramatic form, no mercenary points to be won.”

Another student raised a hand, and Crowley refused to bow to the conventions of an antiquated pedagogical system a moment longer. “If you have something to say, just say it. I’m not your mother.”

“It’s just...um...if it’s not on the exam….um,” the student said, twisting a corner of his notebook page nervously. “Um. Do I need to be here?”

Crowley grinned. “An excellent question. I may have underestimated you. No, you don’t _need_ to be here.” He tipped his glasses lower on his nose for the effect of looking over them at the student in question. “In fact, I hereby promise to mark every one of you as in attendance in every one of these discussion sessions, whether you’re here or not.”

“Um,” said the first student, beginning to look hopeful, “Does that mean—”

“Yes, I only want students in my class who want to hear what I have to say,” Crowley clarified. “No penalty if that doesn’t include you. If you’ve got somewhere better to be than here, reading the admittedly beautiful ramblings of a man who’s been dead for centuries, go forth and. Well, just go forth.”

At least six students shuffled nervously (but with the sort of clenched-jaw bravery that comes from bucking the trend of all those years of downtrodden student-dom) to their feet. Crowley was proud of them, he found to his surprise. 

“Right,” he said, to the smaller class. “How many of you have read _Romeo and Juliet_ before?”

A couple of hands went up, including Warlock Dowling’s. (Warlock, Crowley noted, was leaning forward in his seat with a sort of hesitant enthusiasm for Crowley’s unplanned act of rebellion. Interesting.)

“And how many of you thought to yourself, ‘How pathetic! They’re teenagers, making such a big fuss about their first crush’?” 

Most of the hands stayed up. Warlock Dowling’s didn’t. Even more interesting. 

“That’s the cynicism,” said Crowley. “You assume that a thirteen year old can’t feel the depth of raw emotion that, say, a Chekov hero can. You assume especially that a thirteen year old girl—a much maligned demographic—cannot have the kind of serious feeling that Uncle Vanya can.” 

Warlock was leaning even further forward. 

“Turn to Act 3, Scene 5.” A shuffling of paper. “Mr. Dowling, would you like to read Romeo or Juliet?”

“Juliet,” said Warlock without a second of hesitation. Then, riding the crest of the thought spoken without consideration, “I mean—”

“No, excellent choice.” Crowley picked one of the more enlightened looking undergrads. “You, Ms. Device. You’re reading Romeo.”

“ _Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day_ ,” began Warlock. “ _It was the nightingale, and not the lark that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear._ ”

Crowley closed his eyes to listen. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d shifted into an old pattern, well-worn after all of these years as a director. He wasn’t teaching anymore. He was seeing the production these actors could make. He was letting the words flow over him—or maybe it was through, like some kind of linguistic tunnel. He saw the production they could make and decided—it could be a production they _would_ make. 

“Pause for a moment,” he instructed. Anathema Device paused. “You’re both reading this like it’s poetry.”

“But…isn’t it poetry?” asked Warlock. 

“No, it’s a pair of teenagers in full flush of their first real romance. It’s breathless is what it is. It’s not beautiful because it’s serious,” explained Crowley. “It’s absurd and perfect and stupid. _That’s_ why it’s beautiful.”

The two undergrads were looking at him, faces full of the expectation that Crowley had answers to give them. Expecting answers about love, about life, about what these words meant. That was a lot to expect from him, who had never managed to sort out any of it, for all that his musicals almost always ended with a kiss. 

“Right. I want the pair of you to run around the building.”

The two matching expressions turned instantly to confusion. It put Crowley back on even footing again. 

“Hop to it,” he said. “First one back gets an automatic A+ on the first essay.”

Both students raced out the door. Crowley may not have been a fan of the oppressive structures of power in education, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t exploit them. 

Warlock and Anathema came back red-faced and breathless. 

“A tie. A+ for both of you. Now, start again,” said Crowley, shoving their scripts back into their hands. 

“ _Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day_ ,” said Warlock, gasping. This time, it sounded just the right kind of frantic. 

Crowley let the scene run. Anathema was stiff as a board, but Warlock was blossoming. He had a natural instinct for the meter, tumbling through the iambic pentameter like he was born for it. 

They finished the scene and the class sat in a brief bubble of stunned silence. 

Finally, Crowley spoke. “Right. So we’ll be spending the rest of the term mounting a production of this play.” He cleared his throat. “Obviously, we’ll be doing this very much on the down low. We don’t have enough for a full cast, so see if you can blackmail any friends into joining us.”

Warlock chewed thoughtfully on his lip as Crowley spoke. Would he take Crowley up on the trap he’d laid, though, that was the real question. 

“I’ll find us a performance space when the time comes. But we won’t have costumes, we won’t have props. You’d be right to be frightened right about now. A performance like this...it won’t be easy.” The class was beginning to blanche, even quail a little. 

“But we’re not alone here. We have one thing working for us already: this is the single greatest love story ever told,” said Crowley, lying through his teeth, but also meaning it more than he liked to admit. “Your homework for tonight is to read the play. Or watch it. Download it. Whatever. I don’t care. But get your first taste. Class dismissed.”

The students shuffled out of the room, vaguely shell-shocked. It wasn’t entirely different from the way any cast looked after the first table-read of a Crowley production, to be honest. They always needed a moment to process, a bit of time to acclimate to the way Crowley worked, before anyone started actually speaking to him. 

And yet here was Warlock Dowling, chewing on his lip, waiting for Crowley’s attention. 

That was a first. 

“Can I help you?” asked Crowley, trying very hard not to sound sarcastic. 

“It’s not weird that I wanted to be Juliet, right?” asked Warlock. God, to be so wantonly young and vulnerable. 

Crowley felt his face do that stupid softening thing it did usually in an Aziraphale-specific way. “Not, it isn’t weird at all. She’s got all the best bits, doesn’t she?”

“Everyone always says that the ‘ _Soft, what light through yonder window breaks?_ ’ bit is so beautiful,” said Warlock. “But that scene’s such grandstanding poetry. The scene you picked… the meter’s so subtly pushing the story forward.” Warlock looked down, clearly embarrassed to have said so much. “I guess I just like this scene better, that’s all.”

“You sound like a poet yourself,” said Crowley. 

Warlock blushed and kept his gaze fixed on his shoes. “Just a little bit, I guess.”

“I think being a poet is more of a yes/no question than something with gradations,” said Crowley. “Have you written poetry?”

“Yes.”

“Then congratulations. You’ve qualified to be a full fledged poet.”

Warlock’s glanced flickered up to Crowley’s face and then quickly back to the floor. “Only I might not be very good.”

“I can’t speak to that until you show me your work,” said Crowley. “But you don’t have to be a _good_ poet to be a poet. You’ve already cleared that hurdle.”

A pause. “You just said ‘until.’ You said _until_ I show you my work.”

Crowley grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”

“So…you’d read it?” Clear, open, horrifyingly open and vulnerable. Crowley would have cringed for Warlock, if he weren’t cringing about his own surge of protective feelings. 

“I’d love to.”

* * * 

To be completely frank, Aziraphale was failing miserably in influencing young Warlock Dowling in any direction whatsoever. Warlock stayed in the back of the room, not-quite-slouching in one of the uncomfortable desk/seat combos, and Aziraphale tried very hard to think of a reason to speak to him directly. It would just be so awkward to, what, just ask him how his life was going? What on earth would Aziraphale have to say to a _child_ all of twenty years old?

“Sir?” asked Adam Young. “I have another question about the sonnet form.”

And as much as Aziraphale was failing utterly to find an excuse for a tete-a-tete with Warlock, he was succeeding with flying colors with Adam. If only he had snuck into this teaching position to debate poetic forms with Adam Young, then he could pretend this was all a cunning plan to victory. 

“Yes?” said Aziraphale. 

“It’s just very restrictive, isn’t it?” said Adam, who never slouched. He sat bolt upright in his seat and always looked perfectly well-rested and prepared for class, but in a _cool_ way. “I mean, fourteen is a bit arbitrary.”

“Only since the 13th century, of course,” said Aziraphale. “The structure and the rhyming only became rote at that point. Before that it just meant, you know, from the Sicilian. Just a little song of a poem.” Warlock was fidgeting in his seat. He always did when Adam started to ask questions like this. He hadn’t actually spoken yet, though. Just vibrated gently with unspoken opinions. 

“It’s hardly a song at all, though,” said Adam. “Not like a ballad. People sing ballads all the time.”

“It’s like a puzzle,” said Warlock, seemingly without his own conscious decision to speak. “Some poetic forms are a challenge just because it’s fun to set yourself the same challenge that Petrarch faced, you know?”

Adam twisted in his seat. “So less like a song, more like a mountain all the poets have climbed before you?”

Warlock nodded enthusiastically. “It’s like...if Edna St. Vincent Millay can do it, so can I.”

“Can you?” asked Adam, leaning towards Warlock. “Can you really? Write sonnets, I mean.”

Warlock’s face flushed bright red, and Aziraphale sighed. Too far, too quickly. 

“I think that’s an admirable challenge for all of us,” said Aziraphale, turning towards the rest of the class. “Let’s all take on Mount Sonnet and see what we can come up with. Bring me your best sonnets by next week.”

A few groans, but the class was usually happy to be led by Adam’s meandering curiosity. He’d gathered a nice little coterie of students who often left or arrived with him. Sadly (for Aziraphale’s purposes), the coterie did not include young Warlock. 

The students filed out. As always, Warlock lingered slightly, just long enough to be the last one to leave. Usually, he didn’t speak, but Aziraphale had once read a book about how to approach horses, and it seemed applicable. 

(Aziraphale’s family owned horses. In fact, they had competitively bred horses and Gabriel had once won an award or a medal or somesuch for his dressage skills. Aziraphale had read the appropriate books and examined the necessary clothes. No thank you, he had decided.)

“If you’ve been reading Edna St. Vincent Millay, you’re on the right track for sonnets,” said Aziraphale, making sure to not look at Warlock as he passed by his desk. “But I’d suggest you look for _Rapture_ by Carol Ann Duffy next. I think you’ll like what you find.”

Warlock’s glance shifted to Aziraphale and away quickly before he nodded. 

“Though you also can’t do better than Shakespeare,” added Aziraphale, straightening the papers on his desk with a thump. “I’ve always loved 40.”

Warlock cleared his throat. “I. Um. I like that one too. It’s better than the one comparing some guy to a summer’s day, I think.”

Aziraphale nodded, biting back the urge to correct such a blatant mischaracterization of the early sonnet sequence. “I like the opening line. It reminds me of someone I—” Aziraphale cut himself off. That would be saying too much, and far away from the point to boot. “Just. It’s lovely. To love someone so much. ‘ _All mine was thine before thou hadst this more_ ,’ truly. It captures something very real.”

“Do you think—” Warlock started to ask, but stopped himself. Aziraphale let himself look up then, tried to pour the fellow-feeling into his eyes. Warlock searched Aziraphale’s face and found something that let him continue. “Do you think the man he was writing to—the young man must have been really lovely, right? Maybe too lovely for someone who just sits about writing poetry all the time.”

“Oh, dear, no, not at all,” said Aziraphale. He turned to face Warlock, who was fidgeting dreadfully. “You can’t say ‘just’ about someone who writes poetry, surely! That makes it sound so small when it’s really so magnificently important.”

“So even though Shakespeare keeps saying he’s so old and boring and can’t do anything but write,” said Warlock, “you think maybe he had a bit of a—a bit of a chance?”

Aziraphale beamed up at him. “Oh, absolutely. I’d say the right poem would win anyone’s heart, wouldn’t you?”

Warlock looked back down at his shoes. “I couldn’t say.”

“I can remember,” said Aziraphale, too caught up in the memory suddenly to remember that Warlock didn’t need to hear about his own dismal romantic history, “a friend of mine used to recite modern poetry to me when I was your age. He wanted to prove a point, you know, because I wasn’t very receptive to—to contemporary work back then. He had whole swathes of Mary Oliver just, you know, in his memory. It really was so lovely and I—”

The memory of Crowley sprawled across Aziraphale’s bed, reciting Mary Oliver from heart, was as real and as heartbreaking in that moment as it had been for decades. Crowley’s red hair scattered across Aziraphale’s sheets, that perfectly sweet earnest face not quite pointed towards Aziraphale, always sitting on his desk, pretending not to listen, but always, _always_ rapt. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “It was very effective, is what I mean. Had I been—had I been a bit braver, I think.”

Warlock’s brow had furrowed. “What happened to...um, your friend?” he asked with what he clearly thought was great subtlety. 

Aziraphale waved him off. “Oh, you know. Years of friendship, wouldn’t change it for the world,” he said brightly, smiling tightly. “Crowley has always been—”

“Crowley?” repeated Warlock. “The TA for the Shakespeare course?”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. This conversation had really very much gotten out of his control. “Quite. Yes. But that’s hardly the point here, is it? What I meant to say—well, what I meant was—”

“Thanks, professor,” interrupted Warlock. “That was really helpful.” 

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Was it? Good, good.” He must be better at this than he thought.

* * * 

_1992_

“I’ve got a poem for you,” said Crowley. 

The day had been warm, truly warm for the first time since December, and Crowley had wheedled Aziraphale into agreeing to take their homework outside. Aziraphale had his back against the trunk of the trunk of the tree, but Crowley had slowly slid downwards, as he always did. Supine was more or less his natural state. 

And maybe it was the fact that Aziraphale had rolled the sleeves of his crisp button-down shirt up to his elbows, or maybe it was the fact that Crowley’s slow downwards sliding had brought his head close enough to Aziraphale’s legs where they were crossed at the ankles that Crowley was sure he could feel the body-warmth of them radiating outwards. Or maybe these things just reach a point where the long simmer reaches a boil, some sort of inexorable law of physics and human nature. 

But—whatever the reason—that was the day that Crowley said it all out loud. 

“Another Mary Oliver, is it?” said Aziraphale, not looking up from his textbook. He was cramming for one of his gen ed classes and, damn him, adorably highlighting everything he didn’t quite understand until the whole textbook was more yellow than white. 

“No,” said Crowley. He rolled over onto his belly, propped up on his elbows. “No, I wrote it.”

That made Aziraphale look up from his textbook, but it was one of his scattershot glances. It flickered up to Crowley’s face—but not quite to meet his eyes—and then down again to his book. 

“Oh?” he asked, carefully neutral. “I didn’t know you wrote your own.”

“Don’t usually.” 

Another scattershot glance, then another. 

“What’s the occasion?” asked Aziraphale. Still purposefully neutral. Aziraphale didn’t lie well, but he could maintain stiff decorum like a champ. 

“Felt like this needed saying, I suppose,” said Crowley. 

“Do you, um, do you want me to read it? Or—or is this one of the ones you need to recite?” Aziraphale asked. 

“You’d better just read it,” said Crowley. He had planned to recite it, maybe even look soulfully into Aziraphale’s eyes as he did it, but he found his courage utterly lacking in the moment. He was always more cowardly in the moment than he liked to admit during the planning stages. 

He had a written version, of course he came prepared with a written version. What if he had forgotten the words mid-recitation? Crowley’s backup plans had backup plans. He pulled it out of his back pocket and awkwardly held it out towards Aziraphale. 

The textbook was set aside, but it still occupied Aziraphale’s lap and, somehow, that was what Crowley found himself fixated by. He couldn’t quite watch as Aziraphale actually read the words on the page, couldn’t bring himself to try to predict a response by watching the emotions flicker across his face. 

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, finally, after perhaps a hundred years of waiting. Or perhaps it had only been a moment, but it certainly felt like a century, at least to Crowley. 

“Do you—can you, um.” What was the question Crowley wanted to pose here? _Do you feel the same about me?_ would have been an excellent choice. Stumbling more honestly on that question’s heels was, _Can you love me, actually love me?_ A little too pathetic, that one, but far more honest. 

“Best not, my dear,” said Aziraphale firmly, but kindly. 

Possibly all the air that had ever existed flew out of the universe in one great whoosh. Gravity multiplied by measurements beyond human imagination. Time froze in painful icicles around Crowley. 

His stupid heart had assumed the answer would be, “yes.” His stupid, stupid heart with all its wild imagination. 

“We’re graduating soon, you see,” said Aziraphale. “You’ll be going off somewhere exotic, and I’ll—I’ll probably plod along for a little while and then give up, you know. I’ll end up running a nice little shop somewhere, and I’ll frame the playbill for a very small production of a very small show I directed way back in my prime, and I’ll think about my time in the theater with the kind of fond homesickness that everybody feels about something beautiful they failed to keep, you know?”

It was a long speech, Crowley thought, and it was lucky that time had completely stopped for it. 

“It’s simply impractical.” Aziraphale wasn’t even looking at Crowley, he was still looking down at the paper in his hands. “You must see that.”

Crowley sat up. “It’s not me, it’s just bad timing. That’s it, is it?” he said, hollow.

“We’re both very young,” said Aziraphale, and that—that was what made the penny drop. 

“That’s your brother talking,” he said. “You’re repeating him word for word, aren’t you?”

“You and I are just very different people, Crowley,” said Aziraphale testily. “It just doesn’t make sense. I don’t need my brother to point that out.”

“Alright, angel,” said Crowley. “It was just a thought, that’s all.”

Within weeks, they were no longer roommates and, as predicted, Crowley’s flight left the morning of graduation. He had a gig already lined up as the assistant director for a play in Paris. Aziraphale, contrary to his own expectations, had three offers to choose from, one from an off-off-off Broadway experimental production of _Macbeth_.

* * * 

“I’m writing a sonnet,” Warlock announced.

Crowley had lost track of his pencil and was patting every likely pocket, gripping the script between his teeth. He grunted something vaguely querying. 

“For...um, for personal reasons,” Warlock continued. “I’m writing, um. A sort of. A love sonnet. Sort of thing.”

Crowley stopped looking for the pencil and removed the script from his mouth. 

“Um,” he said eloquently. “Are you? How, um. How nice.” He coughed. “I mean, um. I’ve heard that can be—”

“But the problem is that I don’t know that many sonnets,” continued Warlock doggedly. “But I. I like this one.” He held a sheet of paper out towards Crowley, who took it gingerly, like it might explode. 

“It’s one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,” explained Warlock. “It’s probably the sort of poem someone should memorize and. Someone should memorize, um.” He seemed to be losing his track of thought. “Only you’re my Shakespeare TA, right, so I thought—maybe you would. Um. Or we could memorize it together?”

Crowley looked down at the poem in his hand. It was, of course, Aziraphale’s favorite. 

“I’ve had this one memorized a long time, kid,” said Crowley. It was hard not to let the bitterness creep in. Without the bitterness, though, he sounded more melancholy than he was comfortable with. 

“Oh, good,” said Warlock cheerfully. “We should work on how to bring it up naturally. Like. In conversation.”

Crowley looked at Warlock over the rim of his glasses. “I thought you were writing your own poetry,” he said. 

Warlock chewed his lip for a second, nervous and awkward. “Oh. Um. Maybe this could be practice? I mean,” he said, “this could be sort of a training wheels version? But obviously. Um. I’ll write my own sonnet. For, um. For my situation.”

“Your _situation_?” repeated Crowley. He narrowed his eyes. People tended to keep talking when Crowley waited them out. 

“Right, yes,” said Warlock. “Also my friend Adam said he’d be willing to be in our play. You know, since Anathema won’t do it unless she’s getting a grade and, um, she said, um, a paycheck? My friend—he said he played Tony in _West Side Story_ in his high school and it’s practically the same thing.”

“It’s not at _all_ —wait, did you say Adam?” Crowley tried to remember who Aziraphale had been planning to match Warlock with and Adam sounded very, very familiar. 

“Yeah, he thinks it sounds fun,” continued Warlock. “I have another class with him and his friends and I told them about—um. About another thing. And then we thought, why not all be in your play? Together, you know.”

Crowley continued to watch Warlock, who was not one of nature’s accomplished liars. Warlock fidgeted under his gaze but also stubbornly stuck his chin out. He wouldn’t admit to whatever he and his friends were scheming about to direct inquiry, that much was certain. But this wasn’t Crowley’s first rodeo at wheedling information out of someone. He had other, far subtler methods. 

Plus he could use the actors. There were surprisingly few undergraduates who wanted to be in a play for the love of theater these days. 

“Fine. Bring all your friends.” Crowley realized the pencil had been behind one ear this entire time and pulled it out. “And the sonnet. Bring the sonnet too.”

Warlock blanched slightly. “Right. The sonnet too.” Crowley could see that he needed encouragement. 

“You know, I almost—the closest I got to ‘happy ever after’ was with my own poetry,” Crowley admitted. “I’d spent years memorizing other people’s poetry, but nothing came of it. He’d just—well, he never really liked contemporary poetry, I’d thought. But I just kept bringing him my favorites, like a cat brings a dead mouse.” 

Lots of casually, carefully finding ways to bring the conversation round. Lots of backups and contingencies, lots of pretending it wasn’t anything a moment later. Lots of cheerful pats on the shoulder after. Lots of, _Oh, that was lovely, my dear! Is that going in your showcase?_

“But then I wrote him one of my own,” continued Crowley. “And he almost—I think he almost.” 

“How’d you know?” asked Warlock, absolutely transfixed. “How’d you _know_ that he almost?”

Crowley shook his head. That was hardly the way to mentor the kid, not with all of the failures of Crowley’s pathetic mooning. 

“I suppose you just know, don’t you?” he said, trying to smile encouragingly at Warlock. “And a good poem never hurts.”

Warlock nodded as if that was some kind of sage wisdom and not the nonsense that it actually was. 

“Thanks, Mr. Crowley,” he said earnestly. 

“You’re going to be a great Juliet,” said Crowley, caught up in the honesty of the moment. “And I bet your sonnet is beautiful.”

Warlock grinned an impossible, face-stretching grin. 

“Alright, alright, enough,” groused Crowley, an uncomfortable squeeze happening in his chest. The best thing he was ever going to do in life was to keep this kid out of Beez’s clutches. 

Warlock started to leave the classroom, but he stopped at the door. “I think I’m gonna invite my parents to our play,” he announced. “They’ve gotta know—I think they have to come.”

Crowley looked at the kid framed in the doorway. He was so small, so scrawny, like he’d never eaten a full meal in his entire life. He’d been growing his hair out even longer and now it was curling a little at the ends. He was standing up straighter these days too, like he knew how to plant his feet on the ground. 

“Sure, kid,” he said. “Whatever you think they need to know, I hope—I just hope they know how great you are.” He cleared his throat. “Now go away. Go do youthful things.”

Warlock bit his lip for a moment and then rushed back to squeeze Crowley into a hug. It only lasted a moment, but Crowley felt all sorts of stupid feelings clambering to make their way onto his face. 

“Get out of here,” he said, patting Warlock’s back.

* * * 

There are certain things that neither Crowley nor Aziraphale knew. There were, in fact, a great number of things neither knew, despite both being exceptionally clever people.

For example, both would have been surprised by the fact that Adam was waiting for Warlock in his dorm room after Warlock returned from his conversation with Crowley. This revelation would have upended a great deal of Aziraphale’s assumptions—having assumed that Warlock had only just reached a level of confidence necessary to speak directly to Adam outside of the context of the classroom discussion—and, for that matter, Crowley’s too. Crowley had a sort of straight-forward monomania and tended not to notice things that weren’t directly in front of him. If asked, he’d have been surprised without being able to articulate other than, “That fast, really?”

The truth was that Warlock’s roommate had moved out after a quiet moment of honesty about Warlock’s newly discovered sexuality. Adam had found Warlock outside on the stoop of their shared dorm and provided the necessary offended sympathy. Then it turned out that Adam was sharing a room with three other people, all his best friends growing up, and that he’d jump at the chance to just have one roommate. The rest was easy.

“How’d it go?” asked Adam, looking up. Their room was on the top floor of the building and it had an almost garrett-feel to it, like a building that was out of synch with the rest of time but was trying its best to keep up. The ceiling sloped inwards and upwards like the underbelly of a steeple. A window with an impractical sill sat directly in the center of the room. The sill of the window was deeper than average, just wide enough that both Warlock and Adam had developed a habit of sitting on it. Earlier, they had alternated. Now, Warlock joined Adam immediately after he toed off his shoes. 

“I get the feeling he’s tried reciting the Shakespeare before,” said Warlock. He stretched one of his legs along the sill, tucking his toes under Adam’s thigh. Having not had a lot of friends growing up, the gesture felt shocking and wonderful. 

Adam frowned. “So it won’t work,” he said. “We’ll need a new plan.”

“It _might_ work even if he’s tried it before,” said Warlock. “I got the impression that the problem with both of them is that they never finish anything.”

“Still, we should start a backup going,” said Adam seriously. “It sounds like they’re very good at being unhappy, so we have our work cut out for us.”

“The play, that’s what will do it,” said Warlock after a pause. 

“Mr. Crowley hates Shakespeare, you said.” 

“Yeah, but he also gets it, so. I think it might work if we can get them both to be there.”

Adam sighed. “I was supposed to spend this whole term writing my _Paradise Lost_ play, you know. I was going to get a slot at the Stratford Festival out of it.”

Warlock ducked his head, immediately guilty. “We don’t have to—”

Adam poked Warlock’s ankle. “Nah, this is much better. Bet I’ll write a better play later, one of those old-school comedies where old divorced people fall in love again.”

Warlock couldn’t quite meet Adam’s eyes, but he also couldn’t hide the blossoming smile.

“So how do we get both of them backstage and alone during the play?”

* * * 

“Sir, did you know I’m going to play Romeo?” said Adam one afternoon while Aziraphale was erasing the scribbled notes from the board.

“Oh, really? It’s such a wonderful play, you know,” said Aziraphale. “I didn’t know you were interested in acting, though. Branching out a bit?”

“Not really. I’m on a scholarship for playwriting, actually,” said Adam. “But Warlock asked me to be Romeo, you know, because he’s playing Juliet. So I thought, why not?”

Aziraphale froze briefly. “You’re in Crowley’s _Romeo and Juliet_?” he asked. 

“He’s really cool, I think,” said Adam earnestly. “I’m learning a lot about the theater from him.”

“Quite.” Aziraphale realized quite a bit of chalk dust had settled onto the sleeve of his jacket. “He has rather a lot of experience, you know. An excellent mentor.”

“Will you come see the play, professor?” asked Adam. Crowley, had he been in the room, would have felt the urge to high five him for an Oscar-level performance of earnest nonchalance. Aziraphale, who was actually present, just thought Adam was a charming young man, not recognizing any of the artifice. 

“Oh, you want me to be there?” repeated Aziraphale, tickled by the idea. He rarely got invitations to plays that weren’t based entirely on filling empty seats for opening nights. 

“Please, professor,” said Adam, doing a remarkable impression of his dog’s facial expression right around dinner time. He’d practiced it with Warlock. They’d giggled themselves silly, even bringing up reference pictures of Dog on Adam’s phone for comparison. 

“Well, of course, if you like,” said Aziraphale. He had been planning to avoid it, given that he was supposed to be opposing whatever mentoring Crowley was doing in Warlock’s general direction. But, well. Now he’d been invited. 

Adam handed him a flyer, clearly something a student had made. It had big yellow Broadway lights around the border. It was a bit garish, but heartfelt too. All the best parts of theater, really. 

“I’ll be there,” he promised.

* * * 

Crowley officially gave up smoking when he went to university, but he still tended to carry around a pack for emergencies. Back at the Festival, “emergencies” tended to be determined by Beez and whether or not she was holding parts of his budget up as leverage to get him to agree to direct another piece of theatrical drivel. Here, it turned out that an “emergency” could be determined by watching two horrifyingly young men fall in love with each other through the words written down hundreds of years ago by a dead white man.

Crowley inhaled and held it in his lungs for a moment. 

He had directed quite a lot of love stories in his time. If there was a musical bastard for a hit movie, Crowley had directed it. He had done _Mama Mia_ and _Frozen_ and _Hairspray_ (which, actually, went very well if he did say so himself). He had seen dozens of romantic leads fall into bed with each other based on the sheer adrenaline and the power of speaking words of love to each other day in and day out. 

Somehow, it worked differently when it was _Romeo and Juliet_. Or maybe it didn’t, but it was working on Crowley differently. 

Warlock was growing out his hair for the role. These days, it landed somewhere between his shoulder blades. Even though Crowley’s had been red and curled, something about the way Warlock tucked it behind his ears sometimes made something ache in Crowley. He was halfway determined to spirit the kid away and halfway determined to tuck him under his wing and guide him through Beez’s horrors at the Festival. 

He liked Warlock, that was the problem. Or, actually, he _had been_ Warlock once. That was the bigger underlying problem. He knew what was in store. 

At least Adam seemed like a nice enough kid. They’d hurt each other, of course they would, but maybe they’d pull their punches just enough to live through it. 

The doors opened behind him. 

“I have a dumb question,” said Adam, who never asked a dumb question. 

Crowley blew a smoke ring. “Shoot.”

“When I say, `Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized,’ how do I say ‘but love’ without it sounding like ‘butt love’?”

Crowley’s next inhale caught and he coughed. “You’re right, that was a legitimately dumb question,” he said and laughed. 

“It just sounds like it, is all,” said Adam with a shrug. “Hard to take it seriously.”

Crowley looked over the edge of his glasses. It made the kid blur a little in his vision, but he knew the effect it had on people. Adam had no trouble performing the scene. He hadn’t had a single problem, not really. He’d needed a little help with memorizing—Crowley had been happy to encourage him and Warlock to run lines together. But Warlock and Adam made such a perfect Romeo and Juliet. No, Adam would have no trouble making that line work. 

“Emphasize the ‘love,’ not the ‘but,’” Crowley said. Adam was teasing and Crowley knew it, but just in case there was kernal of truth in the question, best to answer. 

“Sounds like good advice for life,” said Adam. “You shouldn’t smoke, you know. It causes cancer.”

“I’ve heard.” Crowley tossed the cigarette to the ground, stubbed it out with the toe of his boot. “Warlock probably needs help with his hair.”

“I can help,” offered Adam. “My best friend used to let me do hers all the time back home.”

“You want a credit in the program? Hair and makeup?” asked Crowley. He’d known acting types to do more for less. 

“Nah, I just like hair,” said Adam with a shrug. He turned to go back inside, but then paused. “Emphasize the love, right?”

“Yeah,” agreed Crowley. “Emphasize the love.”

* * * 

Crowley stayed in the wings during the performance. Of course he did, these were children and it was a great mammoth of a play. A director stays on hand, ready with a bucket if someone’s stage fright requires it.

But the play was flying by. Warlock was a gorgeous Juliet, quiet and strong and sometimes so very deeply in love that it hurt.

God, it hurt. 

“Sometimes I think I might hate this play,” said a familiar voice. Aziraphale was standing right at Crowley’s elbow, and he hadn’t noticed him approach. 

“You never,” said Crowley, scoffing. “You fucking _love_ this play.”

“Well, yes. But I am capable of some very complicated feelings, you know.” Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow. “I have levels.”

Crowley snorted. “I think I might _really_ hate this play,” he said. 

“I played Benvolio in high school,” said Aziraphale. They were both facing the scene on the stage just beyond them. Funny, how they’d both spent their careers just off stage. The thought felt profound, somehow, though Crowley wasn’t entirely sure how. Somehow he had always been away from where the action was happening, like someone who always watches and never _does_. 

“I can see that,” said Crowley. “I liked the _Romeo and Juliet_ you did in ‘02. The Juliet—forgot her name—she was stunning.”

“She’s on a television show these days. Plays some sort of space cop, apparently.”

They watched the scene in silence for a few moments. Warlock was begging Adam to come back to bed, or maybe it was the other way around? They both wanted a bird’s song to mean that the night would stretch on forever. 

“They’re so young. That’s what I hate,” said Aziraphale. “Loving someone like that looks so easy to them, but actually it’s so very hard.”

Crowley stole a look sideways. “Is it? I always found the loving bit was the easy one.”

“Perhaps.” Aziraphale sighed. “I can’t very well claim that Romeo and Juliet had fewer obstacles to overcome than we did, can I?”

That made Crowley actually turn. He needed to see Aziraphale’s face, even thought Aziraphale stayed facing the stage. The lights from the stage danced across his face, a stark contrast to the gloom of the thick curtains and dark-painted wings. 

“Are you—Are you saying, is this—” Crowley found he rather lacked the right words. That was somehow funny too. 

“Of course I’m saying it, Crowley,” said Aziraphale. He had that straight-back posture of defiance. Crowley had seen him use it on recalcitrant actors and busybody tourists in the Costume Warehouse, and he’d always loved it. 

“Of course,” Crowley repeated. “No, wait, hang on—what are you actually saying?”

Aziraphale huffed an impatient breath. “Surely you’re not going to make me _say_ it,” he said. The scattershot glance lifted ever-so-quickly to Crowley’s face and then back to the stage. 

“I think I have to, angel,” said Crowley. “I think I need you to say exactly what—to be specific.” His hands clenched and unclenched nervously. Where did he normally put his hands? 

Aziraphale bit his lip. “Fine.” He turned, finally, fully towards Crowley. “I have loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you. I was a coward and I—”

Crowley was drawn forwards, shushing the rest. “Don’t want apologies. Don’t—Just.” His hands were trembling, but he touched the pads of his fingers to Aziraphale’s lips. It felt like a gross desecration of something holy, or maybe the other way around. 

“But I _was_ , my dear, and I’ve wasted ever so much time,” said Aziraphale. Crowley felt hands go around his waist, and, no, that _had_ to be holy. That felt more right than anything had ever felt before. 

“It caused me pain to refuse, you know,” continued Aziraphale. “I didn’t even really mean to, or, rather, I don’t know. It seemed sensible.”

“You’re sensible,” agreed Crowley, barely keeping track of the words. His hands could cup Aziraphale’s face right now, could run through gray-flecked hair. It had been such a stark blond once, and now there were all these streaks of gray flecked through the tight curls. And Crowley’s hands were there, right in Aziraphale’s hair. 

“I wasn’t, not really,” continued Aziraphale. His hands were on the move too, running up and down Crowley’s sides, his back. “I was so wrong. I was inexcusably wrong.”

“But—you love me? Right now, you love me?” asked Crowley, still gobsmacked. 

Aziraphale nodded. His eyes were filled with tears, oh god, he was going to _cry_. 

“Angel, please. Can I. _Please_ can I kiss you?” 

“Oh, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, a clear-blue-skies smile breaking through. “Anytime you like.”

“Anytime I like,” repeated Crowley, quietly reverent. All of time, any time, any single moment as it unfolded. It was all open, all waiting. He stared down at Aziraphale’s lips and thought, _anytime I like_. 

“Or, you know. Now,” clarified Aziraphale with the edge of a smirk. 

On stage, Warlock said, “O think'st thou we shall ever meet again?”

Adam responded, “I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our time to come.”

But neither Crowley nor Aziraphale heard it. Or, if they did, the words flowed past like currents in a stream of time while they stayed, frozen, a monument that looks on tempests and is never shaken.

* * * 

_Epilogue._

After the play—and the tumultuous applause—Warlock and Adam found them backstage. Crowley hadn’t let go of Aziraphale’s hand since the end of the third act, but then again, Aziraphale hadn’t tried to pull it away. 

“So it worked,” said Adam. 

“What worked?” asked Aziraphale, tugging his attention away from Crowley’s face. 

“You and him,” Adam clarified. He nodded towards Crowley. 

“What about us?”

“Nothing!” said Warlock quickly, ducking his head. “It’s only—”

“Hang on,” said Crowley, realization dawning on him. “Did the two of you—”

“Only a little,” hedged Warlock at the same time Adam said, “Oh, definitely.”

“I’m going to write a play about it,” said Adam happily. “Like a Noel Coward one, you know? Might even get my spot back at the Stratford Festival with this one, it’s going to be so good.”

“No, wait, _your_ spot?” asked Crowley. Another penny dropped. “You weren’t by any chance approached by a headhunter from Marketing at the Stratford festival, were you? Like, back in August?”

“Yeah, someone called Beez wanted me to write a play version of _Paradise Lost_ ,” said Adam. “You guys were more fun, though. I told her I couldn’t ages ago.”

“You told her—”

“And just think, she never mentioned it,” said Aziraphale. “She’s known we weren’t needed here for—”

“Weren’t needed here?” asked Warlock. 

“At least a month,” said Adam. “What do you mean? Do you guys know her?”

“We’re not actually teachers,” admitted Aziraphale. “We’re both directors at the Festival.”

“Wow,” said Adam, but, in Aziraphale’s opinion, not nearly enough enthusiasm. “So what were you doing teaching classes here?”

Crowley grimaced. “That might take a minute to explain.”

“Weren’t needed here?” repeated Warlock again. He looked hurt. “ _I_ needed you, though.”

Crowley reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Actually, I think that went the other way around. You did more good for me than I did for you, I’d bet.” 

“I didn’t,” said Warlock fiercely. Crowley could tell another one of those desperate, heartbreaking hugs was coming and braced himself for it. 

“You _did_ ,” he said softly, once the hug had landed. “If you ever need anything—”

Warlock’s face was a bit blotchy and his big eyes were shining when he pulled back. “My parents didn’t come,” he admitted. 

“Fuck them,” said Crowley vehemently. “I’m so proud of you, kid. I don’t even have the words.”

“That’s alright,” said Warlock. “I’ll write a poem about it later.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! If you want to find me on tumblr, I'm [ifeelbetterer](https://ifeelbetterer.tumblr.com).


End file.
